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To: release-77@MIT.EDU Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 12:24:13 EDT From: Carla Fermann <carla@MIT.EDU> More problems/questions with latex... ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 12:21:09 -0400 From: jh@oobleck.mit.edu (Joe Harrington) Message-Id: <9408171621.AA05201@oobleck.mit.edu> To: bugs@MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@MIT.EDU, consult@MIT.EDU In-Reply-To: Joe Harrington's message of Tue, 16 Aug 1994 19:43:29 EDT <9408162343.AA15855@mercury.MIT.EDU> Subject: decmips 7.7F: xdvi Cc: jh@MIT.EDU Reply-To: jh@MIT.EDU Yesterday I sent email (copied below) to bugs concerning xdvi, and called SIPB and Consulting. Last night I bashed on the problem some more and now have a workaround. I also discovered a few wrong statements in my bug report. Since other people will likely hit this problem soon, I thought you might like to know about it. The Athena release 7.7 xdvi (decmips and rsaix, possibly others) has two bugs: 1. the default density (-S) is documented as 20%, but really is 40%. This makes the letters come out too thin to be read easily. 2. the -S option (and the corresponding X resource) don't work to change the density setting, forcing you to use the 40% density. The 40% density is appropriate for 300dpi fonts. The stated default density of 20% is appropriate for 600dpi fonts (also now the default). Since the release 7.7 fonts omit everything below 600dpi, you can't go back to using 300dpi/40% with the files in this release. This renders the 7.7 xdvi useless for displaying readable text. Also, the loss of fonts below 600 dpi is annoying if you have a 300 or 400dpi printer, as many ILG's, departmental clusters, and people on resnet do. Some workarounds: The old fonts are still there in /afs/athena.mit.edu/system/pmax_ul4/srvd.76/usr/athena/lib/tex/fonts. Users can specify this in their XDVIFONTS variable without messing up their TEXFONTS or PKFONTS variables. They would then use the -p 300 option to xdvi and get the old fonts at the appropriate density. The SIPB xdvi, though missing some newer features, does work well. People can use '/mit/sipb/whateverbin/xdvi -S 20 -p 600 ...' What Athena should do: Fix the bugs. Restore fonts down to 300dpi. Let people know of the workarounds until then. What SIPB should do: Don't "up"grade xdvi until these and any other problems are fixed. At worst, keep the old xdvi binary around with a different name. If Athena doesn't restore 300dpi fonts, perhaps SIPB could take them on. - --jh-- To: bugs@MIT.EDU Subject: decmips 7.7F: xdvi Cc: jh@MIT.EDU Reply-To: jh@MIT.EDU Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 19:43:29 EDT From: Joe Harrington <jh@MIT.EDU> System name: mercury Type and version: KN02ca 7.7F (1 update(s) to same version) Display type: PMAG-DV What were you trying to do? Use xdvi to display a DVI file, and read it. What's wrong: The letters are too thin to be read easily. The quality is definitely much poorer than the previous release's xdvi. The old defaults were 300dpi/40% density. These defaults are 600dpi/20% density. The 20% density is too thin to read most of the letters easily. The -S option (and .densityPercent X resource) to override the defaults appears to have no effect on the output. Using the file dvips.dvi, generated from this release's dvips.tex, I tried the following -S values: 0 1 20 40 80 100 110. Only 0 failed, with a usage error. The others, including 110, were accepted but did not produce different output. There are no fonts anymore to use with the -p option at lower resolutions. Yes, I've redone my TEXFONTS, XDVIFONTS, and even PKFONTS variables and my X resources and read the release 7.7 notes. What should have happened: A density of 40% should have produced darker letters and enabled me to find settings that worked to get the high-quality output I'm used to from xdvi. I talked to 2 olc consultants and they were unable to come up with a workaround. Please describe any relevant documentation references: xdvi man page, where it talks about -S and -p I can do some testing of patches and fixes once they exist. - --jh-- ------- End of Forwarded Message
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